Plastic is everywhere in our lives, from kitchenware and phone cases to grocery bags and children’s toys. However, many people are unaware of the full extent of the environmental impacts of this omnipresent material. Plastic production is a major contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change. In this article, we examine how to calculate your plastic footprint to estimate how much plastic you use and how much plastic waste contributes to environmental degradation.
What is a Plastic Footprint and Why Does it Matter?
A plastic footprint refers to the total amount of plastic waste an individual, organization, or society generates through the production, consumption, and disposal of plastic products. This includes all plastic items, such as plastic bottles, bags, packaging, and other single-use plastic products.
There are different types of plastic pollution generated throughout the life cycle of a plastic product.
1. Plastic Solid Waste
Plastic solid waste refers to any solid plastic material that is discarded or thrown away. This type of waste can be generated from households, businesses, and industries and can have a significant impact on the environment if not properly managed. Plastic solid waste can take hundreds of years to decompose, and if it ends up in the environment instead of a clean landfill, it can release harmful chemicals into the soil and water. Plastic solid waste that ends up in oceans and waterways can harm marine life and disrupt ecosystems. Unfortunately, approximately14 million tons of plastic waste makes their way to the oceanevery year on a global scale.
2. Microplastic Waste
Microplastics are microscopic plastic particles that are less than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) in size. They can come from a variety of sources, including the breakdown of larger plastic items, such as water bottles and plastic bags, as well as the shedding of tiny fibers from synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon.
Microplastics are difficult to remove from the environment once they have been released. This type of plastic waste can be easily transported by ocean currents and wind and have been found in areas as remote as the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Microplastics can also be easily ingested by animals and even humans. For example, a recent study found that microplastics have already reached the human bloodstream.
3. Atmospheric Waste
The atmospheric waste of plastic includes all greenhouse gasses that a plastic emits from its production to disposal. This is also known as the carbon footprint of plastic. Globally, plastic contributes about 3.4% to global carbon emissions. This means plastic releases 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year, and up to 90% of these are emitted through production.
How Do We Measure Our Plastic Footprint?
While the majority of plastic footprints are generated by corporations, individuals also have a plastic footprint we can assess and reduce. To calculate this, we need to identify three factors:
Plastic Type
The type of plastic used to make the products you’re using. The most commonly used plastic types are PET and LDPE. These are used to create plastic bottles, food packaging, textiles, and reusable plastic bags.
There are also more eco-friendly types of plastic made from natural materials, such as starch, cellulose, or corn oil, rather than petroleum-based chemicals. The most common types of eco-friendly biodegradable plastics are PLA (polylactic acid), PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates), and PBAT (polybutylene adipate terephthalate).
Plastic Weight
The total weight of the plastic products you’re using in a specific time period, such as the kilograms of plastic products you’ve used in a week. While this may seem like a lot to track, there are plastic consumption calculators accessible online that help you calculate the total kilograms of plastic you use in a year with just a few clicks.
With this calculation, you can already identify the amount of solid plastic waste you’re generating within a year. This will give you a clear picture of how many plastic products you may want to replace with a more sustainable option.
Carbon Equivalent
The total amount of carbon necessary to produce a specific type of plastic. For example, every kilogram of PET and LDPE emits about 6kg of carbon.
Once all factors are identified, you can multiply the equivalent quantity of carbon per kilogram of plastic by the total kilograms of plastic products you consumed in a year to calculate the carbon equivalent of your annual plastic footprint.
An estimate computation of the carbon footprint of a regular 500ml PET bottle by 24Bottles and Reteclima Source: PNGEGG
How to Reduce Your Plastic Footprint
By measuring your plastic footprint, you will be able to see your environmental impact and can adjust your personal consumer choices to reduce your plastic consumption.
While the majority of plastic production and plastic footprints stem from companies, individuals can push these entities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through consumer pressure and reduced individual plastic usage. Here are some of the practices you can do to reduce your plastic footprint.
Use reusable bags: Bring your own reusable bags when shopping instead of using single-use plastic bags.
Say no to plastic straws: Refuse plastic straws when you order a drink, or bring your own reusable straw.
Carry a reusable water bottle: Use a refillable water bottle instead of buying bottled water.
Bring your own containers: Bring your own containers to stores for bulk purchases such as rice, beans, and snacks instead of using single-use plastic bags.
Avoid single-use plastics: Avoid using single-use plastics such as disposable cutlery, plates, and cups. There are many eco-friendly reusable cups for every beverage, such as reusable coffee cups and boba cups, that you can use at your favorite store instead of disposable cups.
Use eco-friendly alternatives: Use eco-friendly alternatives to plastic products that you use on a daily basis, such as bamboo toothbrushes, wooden utensils, and beeswax wraps.
Properly dispose of plastics: Ensure that plastic waste is disposed of properly, such as recycling or, for some types of plastic, composting.
New Zealand’s newest national park – and one of the most isolated spots in the country – is polluted with plastic trash. Andrea Vance and Iain McGregor investigate.
There they were, rustling in the red tussock. A pair of Rakiura tokoeka, the elusive Stewart Island brown kiwi, oblivious to the gleeful trampers, watching their every move for close to half an hour.
For Harry Pearson and Jan Jordan, this was the capstone of the perfect holiday. A long stretch of summer spent tramping through New Zealand’s wilderness; a joyous journey through forests, alps, even swimming with Hector’s dolphins in Southland’s vast Te Waewae Bay.
The isolated West Coast of Stewart Island was the final leg, the Nelson couple drawn by dreams of spotting a kiwi in the wild.
But the thrill was short-lived. In the heart of Rakiura National Park, the national icon shares its home with tonnes of plastic rubbish and man-made marine debris.
“It’s just really upsetting,” Jordan says. “I had no idea we had so much waste coming up on to our seashores. It’s so sad. I can’t help thinking of all the wildlife we’ve seen.”
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Mason Bay is recognised as one of the best places to spot kiwi in their natural habitat.
Mason Bay is a mecca for nature lovers and bird watchers, a 14km crescent of sand and an expansive swathe of dunes sweeping back from shore into the island’s forest and peatlands. Wild, extraordinary, and not permanently inhabited since the late 1980s, it is home to more kiwi than Kiwi.
More than 40km from the nearest settlement – Oban has just 400 residents – it can be reached only by hiking, or by plane, a little Cessna 185 that bumps down on the sand at low tide.
But its remoteness has afforded the beach no protection from humanity’s destructive, disposable culture.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Plastic junk is carried on powerful ocean currents, finally resting on Mason Bay’s enormous sand dunes.
Wave after wave pummels the shore, washing up discarded plastic that has swirled into the Southern Ocean from all across the Pacific Rim.
The ghosts of dead fishing gear crunch underfoot. Cracked craypots, frayed ropes entwined with seaweed and buoys wedged in wind-sculpted boulders lie bleached and parched by the sun.
Luminous floats line the bush-sheltered track from the bay to a Department of Conservation hut, strung up like Christmas ornaments to mark the 15-minute route.
Pale blue plastic tubs marked ‘Stolen from Talley’s’ are set at regular intervals on the shore line. The fish bins – used by inshore fishing vessels to transport a catch to processing factories – hold flotsam collected by visitors to the beach.
Metres of blue ribbon laces through the dunes – it is plastic packing tape used to secure bait boxes.
Known officially as abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) – between 500,000 and 1 million tons of marine waste tumbles into the seas from industrial fishing vessels each year.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
A buoy, made by a Taiwanese plastics company, lies in granite boulders and drift wood.
The soft sand is speckled with every kind of household item – a dust pan, sandals, a marker pen, toothbrushes, bottles, the ring from a barbecue, half a plastic rubbish bin.
Torn sweet packets and sauce bottles come from as far away as Korea, Japan and California.
The shoreline has also caught larger items – a car door, sun bed, and plastic drums – weathered and broken from ocean travel.
Blue, green, purple and yellow shards are scattered as shells. Tiny dots of plastic are as ubiquitous as the island’s biting sandflies, littering each new high tide mark with a fresh rainbow of deadly pollution.
An oystercatcher feeds near a newly washed-up plastic drum lid.
This is what is visible. But the problem goes deeper – the bulk of pollution is disintegrating, unseen, into the sand.
That’s because plastics don’t break down, they break up, finally becoming microplastics, defined as less than 5mm in diameter, and nanoplastics (less than 0.001mm). These are then ingested by organisms like plankton, sending the particles up the food chain.
The detritus doesn’t surprise Canterbury University environmental chemist Sally Gaw: “The presence of macro and microplastics on remote beaches tells us that plastics are everywhere, that there isn’t anywhere that hasn’t been touched by our love affair with plastic.”
Iain McGregor/Stuff
A pipit rests at the high tide mark, strewn with tiny pieces of plastic debris.
“Microplastics have been found all throughout human bodies, and we know that the smaller they get, the more damage they can do,” she says.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Trampers gather larger pieces of rubbish and leave them on the beach in the hope they’ll be collected.
The problem with plastic
Humans have been using plastics on a rapidly increasing scale since the 1950s. For at least half that time, we’ve known that our addiction to convenience has been fouling the ocean.
The first study examining the amount of near-surface marine plastic debris was published in 2014. It estimated at least 5.25 trillion individual plastic particles weighing roughly 244,000 metric tons were floating in the world’s oceans.
The Sustainable Coastlines Charitable Trust says 75% of what they collect in beach clean-ups is plastic.
Sustainable Coastlines is building a national litter database. They calculate that for every 1000m2 (quarter acre) of beach, there are 329 items. Three quarters of what the charity collects is plastic.
Most of these products – like food wrappers – are used for just minutes or hours by humans. But they will persist in the environment for hundreds of years.
The scale of the problem captured the attention of the media and made their way into popular culture, with horrifying images of wildlife distressed or killed by debris, footage of five immense, floating trash vortexes, and influencers who disavow consumerism for a zero-waste lifestyle.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Fishing rope snagged on the beach. Many items commonly used in commercial fishing contain plastics. These include nylon lines, ropes, nets, traps, floats, tubs and safety and wet weather gear.
But remarkably, global production is accelerating. On current trends, plastic use will nearly double from 2019 across G20 countries by 2050, reaching 451m tonnes each year.
“As we become more aware, so too do polluting industries – around how to find loopholes. For example, they will say: ‘we’re increasing our recycling rates, we are light-weighting’,” says environmental anthropologist and campaigner Trisia Farrelly, of Massey University.
“But all that does is give an excuse to allow for not only continued plastic production, but increased plastic production.”
But Farrelly warns that industry influence is still at play in the negotiations.
“Countries recently submitted ideas about core elements that could be in the text of the treaty. Some commitments are still too low, and some countries are not particularly interested in ambitious policy like caps on plastic production or removing petro-chem subsidies, or for fossil fuel extraction.”
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Harry Pearson abandoned his search for kiwi to pick up litter from the beach and dunes.
There is also a growing awareness that plastic pollutes without being littered, through the release of contaminants used in manufacture. These chemicals leach into the environment, air and water, and possibly the food chain.
Gaw points to phthalates, additives that make plastics more flexible and so commonplace in household cleaners, food packaging and cosmetics that they are known as ‘the everywhere chemical’.
Researchers have linked them to asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and diabetes, low IQ, neurodevelopmental issues, behavioural issues, autism spectrum disorders, and fertility and reproductive issues.
The European Union and the United States are beginning to restrict and regulate chemicals in this class –and the EU is under particular pressure to phase out PVC and PVC additives.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Harry Pearson and Jan Jordan collect armfuls of plastic rubbish.
Now what for the bay?
For close to thirty years, Mike Hilton has nursed the sand dunes of Mason Bay back to health. The screaming, complex westerly winds that bring plastic on the ocean currents too carry an invasive pest.
Marram grass – also planted on the island by farmers to tame the dunes – was smothering native vegetation, like the fiery orange pīngao, until Hilton pioneered a multimillion-dollar eradication programme for the University of Otago and DOC. He’s also gathered a “rich collection” of glass bottles from the beach.
As the ancient ecology – it is the largest dune system in the Southern Hemisphere – restores, the fore dunes will break down and blow away.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Dune systems are one of New Zealand’s most damaged and endangered ecosystems. The Rakiura Dune Restoration Programme began in 1999, and is the world’s largest and longest-running.
But the retreating sand will uncover a fresh environmental problem. For years, regular beach clean-ups were happening on Mason Bay. But sources have told Stuff that up until about 2000 some of the collected trash was buried in the fingers of sand that stretch deep into the mānuka forest.
Although it is aesthetically troubling, Hilton says the debris won’t have an impact on the restoration work.
However, it leaves a headache for DOC – already stretched thin by competing tourism and biodiversity needs on the end-of-the-earth island.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Plastic pollution on the beach at Mason Bay. Hikers gather larger pieces of rubbish and leave them at the start of tracks in the hope they’ll be collected.
Rakiura operations manager Jennifer Ross says it’s a longstanding issue. “The way the oceanic currents work in the area means it’s constantly in line for all sorts of debris from the Tasman Sea.
“In recent years we’re seeing more smaller pieces of plastic too – the kind that mixes in with the sand is very difficult to collect.
“No-one likes seeing rubbish in our wild places and unfortunately there’s no one simple solution – it’s a global problem.”
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Talley’s Group has funded clean-ups in the Southland region since 2011, and for more than a decade staff have helped shift the rubbish.
DOC also supports clean-ups by the Southern Coastal Charitable Trust, which involve boats and a helicopter to uplift the trash.
For more than a decade these have been funded by Talley’s. They’ll contribute $10,000 to the next collection in July, and staff from the Bluff plant will take part.
Mike Black, Talley’s depot supervisor, says rubbish on Southern beaches comes from as far afield as the Netherlands and even fish cases from South America.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Talley’s Group says fish bins that are returned are repaired, recycled and reused by the fishing community. It also funds clean-ups on southern beaches.
In recent years crews have found “a huge amount” of domestic rubbish, and believe some may have come from an old landfill, exposed at Fox River in 2019 floods.
Fishers don’t discard waste on purpose and bins are tied or securely stored, he said. “But occasionally while on deck, an empty case about to be used might be washed off by a rogue wave. It is not what anyone wants, but it can happen while out in rough sea.”
Around 70% are returned to the companies who own them, and Talley’s repairs or recycles them.
The world’s oceans are polluted by a “plastic smog” made up of an estimated 171 trillion plastic particles that if gathered would weigharound 2.3 million tons, according to a new study.
A team of international scientists analyzed global data collected between 1979 and 2019 from nearly 12,000 sampling points in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.
They found a “rapid and unprecedented” increase in ocean plastic pollution since 2005, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.
“It is much higher than previous estimates,” Lisa Erdle, director of research and innovation at the 5 Gyres Institute and an author on the report, told CNN.
Without urgent policy action, the rate at which plastics enter the oceans could increase by around 2.6 times between now and 2040, the study found.
Huge amounts of that plastic waste end up in the oceans. The majority comes from land, swept into rivers – by rain, wind, overflowing storm drains and littering – and transported out to sea. A smaller but still significant amount, such as fishing gear, is lost or simply dumped into the ocean.
Once plastic gets into the ocean, it doesn’t decompose but instead tends to break down into tiny pieces. These particles “are really not easily cleaned up, we’re stuck with them,” Erdle said.
Marine life can get entangled in plastic or mistake it for food. Plastic can also leach toxic chemicals into the water.
And it isn’t just an environmental disaster; plastic is also a huge climate problem. Fossil fuels are the raw ingredient for most plastics, and they produce planet-heating pollution throughout their lifecycle – from production to disposal.
Figuring out exactly how much plastic is in the ocean is a hard exercise. “The ocean is a complex place. There are lots of ocean currents, there are changes over time due to weather and due to conditions on the ground,” Erdle said.
The researchers spent years poring over peer-reviewed papers as well as unpublished findings from other scientists to try to collate the most extensive record they could – both in terms of timeframe and geography.
Most of the study’s samples were collected in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, where the majority of data exists. The study authors say more data is still needed for areas including the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic and South Pacific.
“This research opened my eyes to how challenging plastic in the ocean is to measure and characterize and underscores the need for real solutions to the problem,” Win Cowger, a research scientist at Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research in California and a study author, said in a statement.
Since the 1970s, there has been a slew of agreements aimed at stemming the tide of plastic pollution reaching the ocean, yet they are mostly voluntary, fragmented and rarely include measurable targets, the study noted.
The study authors call for urgent international policy intervention. “We clearly need some solutions that have teeth,” Erdle said.
The United Nations hasagreed to create a legally binding global plastics treaty by 2024, which would address the whole life of plastics from production to disposal. But big divisions remain over whether this should include cuts in plastic manufacturing, which is predicted to quadruple by 2050.
Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and now-president of Beyond Plastics, a non-profit focused on research and consumer education, said that policies to reduce the amount of plastic produced in the first place are the only real solution, especially as companies are continuing to find new ways to pump more plastics into the market.
“The plastics and petrochemical industries are making it impossible to curb the amount of plastic contaminating our oceans,” Enck told CNN by email.
“New research is always helpful, but we don’t need to wait for new research to take action — the problem is already painfully clear, in the plastic accumulating in our oceans, air, soil, food, and bodies.” Enck said.
Humans have filled the world’s oceans with more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic, dramatically more than previously estimated, according to a major study released Wednesday.
The trillions of plastic particles — a “plastic smog,” in the words of the researchers — weigh roughly 2.4 million metric tons and are doubling about every six years, according to the study conducted by a team of international researchers led by Marcus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Institute, based in Santa Monica, Calif. That is more than 21,000 pieces of plastic for each of the Earth’s 8 billion residents. Most pieces are very small.
The study, which was published in the PLOS One journal, draws on nearly 12,000 samples collected across 40 years of research in all the world’s major ocean basins. Starting in 2004, researchers observed a major rise in the material, which they say coincided with an explosion in plastics production.
The findings pointed toward both the vast amount of plastic that is flowing into the world’s oceans and the degree to which it is journeying long distances once in the water. The study may deliver a jolt of energy to U.N. talks to reduce global plastics pollution that started last year.
“This exponential rise in ocean surface plastic pollution might make you feel fatalistic. How can you fix this?” said Eriksen, a founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit group that works to study and fight ocean plastics pollution.
“But at the same time, the world is negotiating a U.N. treaty on plastic pollution,” Eriksen said.
Measuring plastic in the ocean
The weight of all that plastic is equivalent to about 28 Washington Monuments. The samples that were studied end in 2019, so several more Washington Monuments of plastic are likely to have dropped into the sea since then.
Eriksen and the other researchers traveled the world’s oceans to collect samples, combed the archives of previous researchers for unpublished data and incorporated other peer-reviewed studies into their analysis. They used new models to estimate the quantity of plastic, leading to sharply revised, higher numbers compared with a 2014 study by Eriksen and some of the same researchers that used a much smaller set of data.
Only 10 percent of the plastic ever made has been recycled. The material that doesn’t make it into landfills can get swept into rivers or directly into oceans. It slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, known as microplastics, which are less than 5 millimeters in length and can be eaten by marine life. Plastic has been found near the summit of Mount Everest and inside the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench — as well as in the human bloodstream.
The study examined plastic samples over 40 years starting in 1979. The researchers found a fluctuating amount of plastic in the samples until 2004, when the numbers started to skyrocket. The increase in plastic particles in the oceans corresponds to a previously observed increase of plastic on global beaches over the same time period, they noted.
“These parallel trends strongly suggest that plastic pollution in the world’s oceans during the past 15 years has reached unprecedented levels,” the study said.
Preventing plastic pollution in the ocean
The data includes samples from the world’s five major gyres, or current systems, which sweep particles from inhabited areas to create large collections of refuse. The best known of these is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where plastics float slightly below the surface.
In looking at samples, the researchers concentrated on the North Atlantic and North Pacific ocean basins, partly because they have been studied more frequently over the decades and are where greater concentrations of the world’s population lives. But high concentrations of plastics were found everywhere.
Global negotiators hope to complete the plastics treaty by 2024. It would regulate all aspects of the life cycle of plastic, including the kinds of chemicals that go into it and whether it’s easily recyclable. Anti-pollution campaigners say it is far easier to deal with plastic before it enters waterways than it is to clean it up afterward.
Eriksen, the study’s lead author, said research into plastics pollution had in recent years started to shift away from oceans and move farther upstream, to rivers and other waterways, as advocates struggled to understand the issue at its origin.
“The plastic pollution, it’s in every biome,” he said. “It’s not just in oceans anymore.”
If you throw a polyester sweatshirt in the washing machine, it doesn’t emerge as quite its former self. All that agitation breaks loose plastic microfibers, which your machine flushes to a wastewater treatment facility. Any particles that aren’t filtered out get pumped to sea. Like other forms of microplastic—broken-down bottles and bags, paint chips, and pellets known as nurdles—microfiber pollution in the oceans has mirrored the exponential growth of plastic production: Humanity now makes a trillion pounds of the stuff a year. According to the World Economic Forum, production could triple from 2016 levels by the year 2050.
A new analysis provides the most wide-ranging quantification yet of exactly how much of this stuff is tainting the ocean’s surface. An international team of researchers calculates that between 82 and 358 trillion plastic particles—a collective 2.4 to 10.8 billion pounds—are floating across the world … and that’s only in the top foot of seawater.
That’s also only counting the bits down to a third of a millimeter long, even though microplastics can get much, much smaller, and they grow much more numerous as they do so. (Microplastics are defined as particles smaller than 5 millimeters long.) Scientists are now able to detect nanoplastics in the environment, which are measured on the scale of millionths of a meter, small enough to penetrate cells—though it remains difficult and expensive to tally them. If this new study had considered the smallest of plastics, the numbers of oceanic particles would no longer be in the trillions. “We’re talking about quintillions, probably, that’s out there, if not more,” says Scott Coffin, a research scientist at the California State Water Resources Control Board and a coauthor of the study, which was published today in the journal PLoS ONE.
“That’s the elephant in the room,” agrees Marcus Eriksen, cofounder of the 5 Gyres Institute and the study’s lead author. “If we’re going to talk about the number of particles out there, we’re not even looking at the nanoscale particles. And that really dovetails into all the research on human health impacts.” Scientists have only just begun to study these effects, but they are already finding that the smallest microplastics readily move through the body, showing up in our blood, guts, lungs, placentas, and even infants’ first feces.
Eriksen and Coffin did their quantification by gathering reams of previous data on plastic samples from across the world’s oceans. They combined this with data they collected during their own ocean expeditions. All told, the researchers used nearly 12,000 samples of plastic particle concentrations, stretching between the years 1979 and 2019. That allowed them to calculate not only how much may be out there, but how those concentrations have changed over time.
They found that between 1990 and 2005, particle counts fluctuated. That may have been due to the effectiveness of international agreements, like 1988 regulations limiting plastic pollution from ships. “That’s the first time that we’ve ever had any sort of evidence that those international treaties in plastic pollution have actually been effective,” says Coffin.
More than 170tn plastic particles afloat in oceans, say scientists
‘Cleanup is futile’ if production continues at current rate, amid rapid rise in marine pollution
An unprecedented rise in plastic pollution has been uncovered by scientists, who have calculated that more than 170tn plastic particles are afloat in the oceans.
They have called for a reduction in the production of plastics, warning that “cleanup is futile” if they continue to be pumped into the environment at the current rate.
The research, by the 5 Gyres Institute and published in the journal Plos One, evaluates trends of ocean plastic from 1979 to 2019. The authors noted a rapid increase of marine plastic pollution and blamed the plastics industry for failing to recycle or design for recyclability.
Dr Marcus Eriksen, the co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, said: “The exponential increase in microplastics across the world’s oceans is a stark warning that we must act now at a global scale, stop focusing on cleanup and recycling, and usher in an age of corporate responsibility for the entire life of the things they make.
“Cleanup is futile if we continue to produce plastic at the current rate, and we have heard about recycling for too long while the plastic industry simultaneously rejects any commitments to buy recycled material or design for recyclability. It’s time to address the plastic problem at the source.”
The researchers looked at 11,777 samples of floating ocean plastics to create a global time series that estimated the average counts and mass of microplastics in the ocean surface layer, lining up the data with international policy measures aimed at reducing plastic pollution to evaluate their effectiveness.
It found that from 2005, there had been a rapid increase in the mass and abundance of ocean plastic. This could reflect exponential increases in plastic production, fragmentation of existing plastic pollution or changes in terrestrial waste generation and management.
The scientists estimate at least 170tn plastic particles are present in the oceans, with a combined weight of about 2m tonnes.
They say without immediate global action on plastic production, the rate of plastic entering aquatic environments is expected to increase approximately 2.6-fold from 2016 to 2040.
Scientists have called for governments to take action to stem the plastic tide. Dr Edward J Carpenter, of the Estuary and Ocean Science Center at San Francisco State University, said: “We know the ocean is a vital ecosystem and we have solutions to prevent plastic pollution. But plastic pollution continues to grow and has a toxic effect on marine life. There must be legislation to limit the production and sale of single-use plastics or marine life will be further degraded. Humans need healthy oceans for a livable planet.”
The paper is timely, as UN member states are meeting to decide policy on plastic pollution this spring.
Researchers have warned that international policies on plastic are fragmented, lack specificity and do not include measurable targets. They have called for corporate responsibility for plastic production to be enforced globally, with legally binding legislation that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, from extraction and manufacturing to its end of life.
One of the most heralded advanced plastic recycling companies in the United States, PureCycle Technologies, has signaled that it could be in some serious financial trouble.
Late last week, PureCycle told regulators at the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission that it would miss its deadline for filing a 2022 annual report. In two SEC filings, the eight-year-old company revealed a potential default on $250 million in revenue bonds issued by a local development agency to finance construction of the company’s first flagship recycling plant, in Ohio.
PureCycle’s loan agreement with investors promised a Dec. 1 completion date for the plant, which the company says is almost finished, along the Ohio River in Ironton, 130 miles southeast of Cincinnati. The company reported that it was negotiating with bondholders on whether the delay means that a default will be declared on the bonds, and if so, whether the parties can reach an agreement on a revised timetable and other matters.
Since it rolled out its technology, developed by the Cincinnati-based consumer goods company Procter & Gamble, in 2017, PureCycle has cast itself as a pathbreaker in recycling polypropylene, a highly versatile and durable plastic found in everything from drink cups and yogurt tubs to car dashboards, coffee pods and clothing fibers. In addition to the Ironton plant, the company is constructing another recycling facility in Georgia and has announced one for South Korea.
PureCycle’s efforts are part of a push by industries that make and use plastics to develop new ways to address a global scourge of plastic waste that threatens public health and the environment, especially the world’s oceans.
But like other kinds of advanced recycling efforts that have struggled to get out of the gate, like the Brightmark plant in Indiana, or faced serious questions about their commercial viability, like the Encina plant planned for Pennsylvania, PureCycle has its own set of problems.
It fought allegations of fraudulent financial claims until it was cleared by an SEC investigation; encountered serious opposition to a feedstock preparation plant in Florida; lost a key source of feedstock and customers for its basic end product, worrying investors; and has been limited by the Food and Drug Administration in what kinds of plastic waste it can recycle into products that meet food safety standards. Then there are the construction delays at the Ohio plant, which PureCycle has blamed in part on the global coronavirus pandemic.
As of Monday, the Orlando, Florida-based company’s stock had fallen 40 percent since Jan. 23, from $9.36 per share to $5.56.
“They have a serious whack-a-mole problem here,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, and a former New York state deputy comptroller. “Every time they fix something, something else goes wrong.”
“They are up to their neck in debt,” which is common for companies that are trying to expand, he said. “They are juggling a lot of balls and you don’t know how it’s going to land, but you see all these dynamics. They have a cumulative set of risks that are threatening the viability of the company.”
Christian Bruey, a spokesman for PureCycle, said the company would not comment.
A Triple Threat to the Planet
The world is making twice as much plastic waste as it did two decades ago, with most of the discarded materials buried in landfills, burned by incinerators or dumped into the environment, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Production is expected to triple by 2060.
Globally, only 9 percent of plastic waste is successfully recycled, according to the OECD. The United Nations describes plastic as posing a triple planetary threat of climate change, nature loss and pollution, with the emissions associated with its production and disposal warming the atmosphere and trillions of plastic fragments polluting the air, rivers and oceans and harming species. Microscopic plastic also poses multiple human health risks, entering the body as people consume food, drink water and inhale tiny particles.
The PureCycle technology relies on using chemical solvents to strip away the coloring and chemical additives or plasticizers that give polypropylene special characteristics such as rigidity or pliability. The company says that the end product, polypropylene resin pellets, can then be used to manufacture new polypropylene products.
When the company first announced its technology in 2017, news accounts described the company and its plans as groundbreaking. And in calls with Wall Street analysts as recently as last year, company executives expressed optimism about PureCycle’s future.
The company routinely invokes the global abundance of polypropylene, labeled as a No. 5 plastic, and the threat that the plastic poses to the environment.
“We have to remember, every year approximately 850 billion pounds of plastic and 170 billion pounds of polypropylene are globally produced from fossil fuels,’’ CEO Dustin Olson said in November. “Every year approximately 16 billion pounds of polypropylene is produced in the U.S., and every year less than 5 percent of polypropylene is recycled.”
“The world wants circularity,” Olson added then, using a term for products based on reuse rather than the extraction of natural resources like fossil fuels. “The world wants a new and real plastic solution, and PureCycle is positioned to change the paradigm, and deliver a technical solution that the world so desperately needs.”
However, the company does not lack for critics, among them Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who has worked as a consultant to the oil and gas industry and now runs The Last Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit that fights plastic pollution and waste.
Dell, who has been following PureCycle since it was founded in 2015, said she believes the recent SEC filings may signal the beginning of the end for the company. While there is no shortage of polypropylene waste for potential recycling, she said, this type of plastic is too difficult to recycle into what the Food and Drug Administration would consider safe for use with food products.
“The feedstock is the problem,” she said this week. “The company cannot predict what feedstock they will get” from household recycling bins, where people pitch all sorts of plastics with different chemical makeups. Some discarded plastic bottles may be contaminated by the residue from household hazardous wastes like oil or pesticides.
“It’s like baking a cake,” Dell said. “You don’t come into a bakery with different ingredients every day.”
The variable feedstock complicates a process that relies on toxic solvents to strip away plastic additives in the polypropylene, she said. While the company describes the output as “like-virgin” polypropylene, the FDA has not entirely agreed.
So far, the only post-consumer plastic waste that the FDA will allow the company to recycle into food-grade plastics is drink cups from sports stadiums, a category that Dell describes as a trivial sliver of the polypropylene waste stream. With consumer product companies making promises to use recycled content in much of their packaging materials, focusing on drink cups from stadiums won’t get them very far, she said.
Dell said the actual recycling rate for polypropylene is less than 1 percent, and that the byproduct is typically used to make things like orange plastic traffic cones, though not by PureCycle.
The company announced in 2021 that it had become the official plastics recycling partner of the Cleveland Browns football team, and last year it added the Cincinnati Bengals as a partner. PureCycle has also teamed with the Orlando Magic basketball team to recycle cups.
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While the company says its Ironton plant will use less energy and produce fewer carbon emissions than making polypropylene from virgin fossil fuels does, PureCycle has filed a document with state environmental regulators that says it will be a high-volume producer of hazardous waste. The document identifies potential categories of waste with an alphabet soup of chemical solvents, including some, like trichloroethylene, linked to cancer in humans.
“The premise is they’re going to stop plastic waste from going to a landfill or incinerators, so they should be considered a green company,” Dell said. “But there is nothing clean about this process.”
She describes the company’s position as “a house of cards.” The fundamental problems “have been there from the beginning,” Dell adds, including the challenge of finding reliable sources of clean feedstocks, transferring new technology from the perfect conditions of a laboratory to commercial recycling plants and disposing of hazardous materials.
An Unanswered Question: Profitability
Yet Ned Hill, a professor of economic development at Ohio State University, suggested that it would be in the best interests of restless bondholders to find a solution with PureCycle.
It is not unusual for a company to miss an SEC annual report filing, he said. “However, if the filings are a symptom of something deeper in the company, that could be an issue.”
Hill noted the expansive list of reasons PureCycle gave for its construction delays in Ironton, including delays in the delivery of critical components, shortages of material, equipment or labor, increased costs, and general supply chain problems attributed to the Covid-19 outbreak, the war in Ukraine and weather-related events in the United States.
Sanzillo meanwhile notes that annual reports filed with the SEC are supposed to include language relating to the company’s ongoing viability. “Auditors have to render an opinion whether the company is a going concern, will they be profitable going into the future,” he said.
“Because there are likely so many problems, and there is likely to be a substantial reworking of debt,” Sanzillo added, auditors “may not be able to say where the company stands.”
Reporter, Southeast, National Environment Reporting Network
James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers.
Canada’s single-use plastic regulations face their first legal test today as the plastics lobby and the federal government head to court.
A federal court judge will hear arguments from lawyers on all sides from Tuesday to Thursday in Toronto.
The federal judge, who is not expected to deliver a ruling for months, must consider whether Ottawa was justified when it listed plastic products as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
“This is one of the largest environmental court cases that we have seen in Canada,” said Anthony Merante, plastics campaigner at Oceana Canada, an intervener in the case.
“This is about tackling Canada’s second most pertinent environmental crisis, which is the global plastics pollution crisis.”
The Liberal government relied on a scientific assessment of plastic pollution published in 2020. It found that plastic pollutes rivers, lakes and other water bodies, harming wildlife and leaving microplastic fragments in the water we drink.
That report was soon followed by several federal policy and regulatory moves, culminating most recently in the federal government officially announcing dates for a ban on the manufacture, sale and import of certain plastic products.
The ban affects checkout bags, straws, stir sticks and cutlery. Some of these prohibitions have already taken effect and some won’t happen until 2025.
The federal government announced which single-use plastics will be covered by a national ban in 2022. (CBC Graphics)
As the government attempted to address the pollution problem, the plastic industry accused the government in legal briefs of introducing a plan with “fatal flaws.” It’s not the federal government’s place, the complainants argue, to regulate plastic pollution when the provinces and territories typically handle waste management.
“The government’s decision to regulate all plastic products may be motivated by laudable goals (e.g., diverting waste from municipal landfills and seizing the value of a circular plastics economy),” says a court document filed on behalf of the plastics industry. “However, those goals must be pursued in accordance with the Constitution.”
The plastics industry also alleges the federal government failed to demonstrate it had enough scientific evidence to justify the regulations. The industry argues Ottawa failed “to conduct a risk assessment” and “to characterize ecological exposure to all plastic products.”
“The test for toxicity is not satisfied by proving that a single bottle cap poses a risk to a single animal,” says a legal brief filed on behalf of the plastics industry.
The plastics companies bringing the case — Dow Chemical Canada, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals — declined to comment or didn’t return CBC’s requests for comment. The Responsible Plastic Use Coalition — an industry group, also an applicant in the case — did not respond.
A York University researcher who is not involved in the case said he believes the federal government’s plastics policies, although well-intentioned, are rooted more in politics than science.
“What they are doing is responding to an optics issue where we see plastic bags in our environment and oceans,” said Calvin Lakhan, a research scientist and co-investigator of the “Waste Wiki” project in the faculty of environmental studies. “That’s things that consumers really care about.”
The lifecycle analysis of individual plastic items, Lakhan said, is complex; he suggested the Liberals’ plastic pollution approach needs a rethink.
A 2019 Deloitte study found less than one-tenth of the plastic waste Canadians produce is recycled. (Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press)
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a media statement the Liberals are delivering on a campaign promise. He then went after the plastics industry.
“While a handful of big multinational companies try to stop our ban on harmful single-use plastics, we’re going to keep fighting for the clean, healthy environment Canadians deserve,” Guilbeault said in the statement. “We’re going to stick to the facts and science and deliver the sustainable options Canadians are asking for.”
The court will hear from several interveners, including the American Chemistry Council, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Several environmental groups, including Environmental Defence and Oceana, will also appear to ask the court to uphold the government’s plastic regulations.
The lawyer representing the environmental groups, Ecojustice’s Lindsay Beck, said a win for the government would solidify the push against plastic pollution, while a loss would throw a wrench into those efforts.
If the court overturns the regulations, she said, it could have a domino effect that could force the government to rescind its single-use plastic ban, which is also subject to its own court challenge.
“It means that that ban would be vulnerable to being overturned,” Beck said.
Federal data show that in 2019, 15.5 billion plastic grocery bags, 4.5 billion pieces of plastic cutlery, three billion stir sticks, 5.8 billion straws, 183 million six-pack rings and 805 million takeout containers were sold in Canada.
A 2019 Deloitte study found less than one-tenth of the plastic waste Canadians produce is recycled. That meant 3.3 million tonnes of plastic was being thrown out annually, almost half of it plastic packaging.
Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia already have taken their own action against plastic bags, as have some cities, including Regina, Victoria and Montreal.
Sobeys eliminated single-use plastic bags at its checkout counters in 2020 and Walmart followed suit this past April. Loblaws announced Monday morning it will ban plastic bags by spring 2023.
Many fast food outlets have replaced plastic straws with paper versions over the last several years as well.
Shipping has become the primary mode of sales in recent years, with small and large businesses alike selling more through online venues than in-store purchases. As such, plastic waste from plastic shipping bags has sharply increased, and individuals and businesses have begun switching to sustainable alternatives to plastic packaging.
Biodegradable materials are a great alternative to plastic bags, with a variety of options, from bags for individuals who only ship items occasionally to businesses that ship constantly. We’ve compiled a list of the top picks for biodegradable plastic bags for packaging to help you decide which one is right for you.
Read on to learn how we chose our top picks for biodegradable packaging bags, or jump to our recommendations.
Choosing the Best Alternatives
We kept several criteria in mind when scouring the market for the best biodegradable plastic bags for packaging. All of the options we’ve chosen are made with 100% compostable materials and are produced through ethical, sustainable practices.
Alternative Materials
As plastic fills landfills and waterways across the world with harmful, non-biodegradable residue, it’s important to switch to a bag that will minimize waste. All of our top picks are made with material that is biodegradable at home or in industrial composting facilities.
Our compostable choices include options that are certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), meaning they will biodegrade in a commercial facility without leaving behind harmful residue. Some of these bags can even be composted at home!
We chose biodegradable plastic bags made of:
PBAT – PBATs are oil-based plastics that fully break down in a matter of weeks without leaving behind harmful residues. Studies suggest that production processes of PBATs may reach negative net emissions by 2040, but until then this material is not a perfect substitute for traditional plastics. PBATs are derived from synthetic oils, so their production emits greenhouse gases – though far less than traditional plastics. However, the polymers that hold this material together are broken down by naturally-occuring enzymes, meaning PBATs can fully decompose in most natural conditions.
PLA plastic – This non-synthetic plastic is derived from plant matter like sugar cane or corn starch. The production process of this material is still fairly energy-intensive, requiring high amounts of water and land-use – as well as resulting in high amounts of GHG emissions – due to agricultural practices for corn and sugar cultivation. However, unlike other plastics, PLAs fully break down, making them an eco-friendly substitution for plastics that would otherwise fill landfills and waterways.
Price
Shipping is expensive enough as is, so our top choices take affordability into account to ensure you’re not overspending on shipping materials.
Social Responsibility
Reducing plastic waste is important, but so is social responsibility. That’s why our top choices ensure ethical practices in all steps of the supply chain.
Quality
Plastic bags have been a popular choice for shipping for decades due to their durability. When looking for biodegradable alternatives, it’s important that the material is sturdy enough to reach its destination in one piece.
Best Biodegradable Plastic Bags
Here are our top picks for biodegradable packaging bags, organized by material.
PBAT, also known as polybutylene adipate terephthalate, is a polymer that fully breaks down in about six weeks. It doesn’t require an industrial composting facility, so it will easily break down whether it’s placed in an at-home composter or if it makes its way into waterways, without leaving behind harmful residue.
KBOT specializes in biodegradable shipping material and offer a variety of compostable mailers. These bags can break down in any natural conditions, meaning bags don’t have to be sent to industrial facilities for disposal.
We have noticed, though, that these bags aren’t as sturdy as some traditional heavy-duty plastic mailers. If you’re shipping something with sharp edges, the bags may get torn.
Pros:
KTOB offers a subscription-based discount for retailers that ship regularly.
Mailers come in a variety of sizes and colors, from sleek black to bright pink, to best fit your preferences.
KTOB offers a variety of mailers, with padded and non-padded, wraps, and even biodegradable cups and straws!
Cons:
Some customers complain that these bags are easily torn in transit.
Most tapes don’t stick well to the materials, so torn bags may not be repairable.
Kipulu bubble mailers are durable shipping bags that are made to be tear and puncture resistant. While Kipulu doesn’t have the same kind of variety as other biodegradable packaging bags, these are far more durable than most.
Pros:
These bags are more durable than most other options.
Bags have a shelf life of 12 months, comparatively longer than other biodegradable bags.
Bags come in black, pink, red, and purple options.
Cons:
Little variety in their bags, so if you regularly ship various products and sizes, this might not be the brand for you.
Slightly more expensive than other options.
PLA
PLA, or polylactic acid, is a biodegradable plastic made from plant sugars and resins. PLAs will decompose in an industrial facility or an at-home composter, depending on the composition of the PLA material. PLA plastic’s decomposition results in no harmful chemical residues and its production results in 75% less greenhouse gas emissions than synthetic plastics.
BeauVibe biodegradable mailers are fully compostable in any condition. Designed for lightweight, soft items, these bags may not be the sturdiest, but their double adhesion means they can be reinforced and reused. And, if you find that BeauVibe isn’t the right fit for you, they offer free returns.
Pros:
BeauVibe partners with the Eden Reforestation Project, which plants a tree for every product sold, restoring forests and economically revitalizing communities impacted by deforestation.
All BeauVibe bags come with double self-sealing adhesion, giving you the option to reinforce or reuse your biodegradable bags.
Cons:
BeauVibe only offers mailers in one size.
Bags are designed for non-fragile, soft items, as they may be prone to tears and punctures when shipping anything with sharp edges.
Some customers complain that packaging labels don’t stick well to the material.
Ecoasis poly bags are made from extra thick material for tear and puncture resistance. Their modern design sets them apart from other monochromatic biodegradable packaging bags, giving your packaging a unique look.
They only come in one size, but their extra-sturdy sealer and weather-proof material ensure your package will get to its destination in one piece.
Pros:
These bags are thick but lightweight, making sure you save on shipping costs without having to worry about durability.
Great for shipping books and sharp-edged items, which may puncture other biodegradable bags.
Cons:
Only comes in one size and style.
Its thickness means it doesn’t stretch well, so bulky items may not seal well.
Better Packaging Co. (BPC) is a one-stop-shop for all your sustainable packaging needs. Offering a wide variety of boxes, bags, fillers, and even sustainable sealers, BPC has everything you need to transition to sustainable shipping. Their bags come in an array of materials, from recyclable plastics to reusable cloth bags to compostable bioplastics.
Their products expire after a few months, so be sure to use them quickly. But, if you’re looking for discounted items, they give away their expired products for free! Just be aware that the expired bag will be a bit more flimsy than normal.
Pros:
BPC’s bags are clearly labeled, letting you know how to compost their products.
Not sure where to send your bag for industrial composting? Better Packaging Co. has developed an app that helps you locate the nearest composting facility.
BPC offers free expired bags that are less suitable for shipping, but still get the job done.
Buy misprints or soon-to-expire bags at a lower cost.
Their Pollast!c poly bags help clean up the oceans! While these bags aren’t biodegradable, they’re made out of recycled ocean plastic that help alleviate poverty and clean up the environment in coastal communities impacted by oceanic plastic.
Cons:
Bags expire after about 2 months, so buying in bulk may not be practicable if you don’t plan on using all the bags in that time.
Top Picks
Still can’t make up your mind? Here are our top picks for a few different categories.
At $0.13 per bag, Better Packaging Co. is the cheapest there is, without sacrificing quality. You can get your biodegradable mailers in packages of 20, 100, or even 1000, with discounts for bulk.
Better Packaging Co. is a one-stop-shop for all your packaging. Their products come in a variety of styles, sizes, patterns, and materials, and even offer customizations for your business.
One of the most important factors in a packaging bag is its ability to make it to its destination. Kipulu’s sturdy bubble mailers are built to last (while still biodegrading in a few months).
Better Packaging Co. gives you everything you need for your shipping. Offering a wide variety of packaging bags, labels, adhesives, and envelopes, everything in this store is 100% biodegradable. They even offer free expired bags and discounted misprint bags to make sure none of their products go to waste.
Their Pollast!c program takes oceanic waste and turns it into recycled plastic bags, and can be recycled in any soft plastic recycling bin.
The eighth annual Our Ocean Conference took place in Panama March 2-3.
Participants made 341 commitments worth nearly $20 billion, including funding for expanding and improving marine protected areas and biodiversity corridors.
One key announcement came from Panama, which said it would protect more than 54% of its marine region.
International delegates attending the eighth annual Our Ocean Conference in Panama March 2-3 have pledged billions to protect the world’s oceans. Participants made 341 commitments worth nearly $20 billion, including funding for expanding and improving marine protected areas and biodiversity corridors.
Previous Our Ocean conferences have generated more than 1,800 commitments worth approximately $108 billion.
The president of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, who inaugurated the event, said the conference was an opportunity for “countries of the world to hold frank conversations with the purpose of committing ourselves to actions for the preservation and strengthening of life in the ocean.
“As Panamanians we inhabit a narrow strip surrounded by blue,” Cohen said in a statement. “To protect it, we should all think of the ocean as a source of life and recognize it as a great ally in our fight against the climate and biodiversity crises.”
Panama, the first Latin American country to host an Our Ocean conference, announced at the event that it was adding 36,058 square miles to its existing Banco Volcán Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Caribbean Sea, an area characterized by deep-sea mountain ranges and high biodiversity. The Banco Volcán MPA was established in 2015 with the protection of 5,487 square miles. Its expansion would bring the total amount of ocean protection within Panama’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to more than 54%.
Panama was the first Latin American country to host an Our Ocean conference. Image by Gregory Piper / Ocean Image Bank.
“With the protection of more than half of its seas, including extensive ocean reserves on both sides of the isthmus, Panama is not only ensuring the conservation of its marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of the people who depend on these ecosystems in the long-term, but is also positioned to lead a much more ambitious regional effort,” Héctor Guzmán, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and co-founder of the marine conservation network MigraMar, who contributed to the scientific research behind the MPA’s expansion, said in a statement.
Panama’s Ministry of Environment also stated at the conference that the country intended to stop more than 160,000 tons of plastic from being imported and consumed in the country by eliminating single-use plastics like cups and utensils, plastic packaging and virgin plastic.
Another commitment came from charitable organizations Bloomberg Philanthropies and Arcadia, which established a fund worth $51 million to help support Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), NGOs and governments to improve and expand marine protection and to help nations protect 30% of oceans by 2030, a goal of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
An alliance of organizations, foundations and private donors also committed to a donation of $5 million to help developing countries join the high seas treaty that was being negotiated — and eventually agreed upon — in New York at the same time as the Our Ocean Conference.
A coalition of groups, known as the Connect to Protect Eastern Tropical Pacific Coalition, also announced a recent commitment of $118.5 million in private and public funds to strengthen marine protections for the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor (CMAR), an area encompassing more than 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) of highly productive and biodiverse waters of Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica.
The U.S. and the European Union also pledged large sums — about $6 billion and $865 million, respectively — to help protect marine biodiversity.
Dan Crockett, the oceans and climate director at the NGO Blue Marine Foundation, who attended the conference, said the amount and worth of the commitments made were “impressive.”
Participants made 341 commitments worth nearly $20 billion at the Our Ocean Conference in Panama. Image by Gregory Piper / Ocean Image Bank.
“There was a strength to the amount of money being put on the table,” Crockett told Mongabay over a call. “And that’s one of the biggest challenges that we face in this space. SDG [sustainable development goal] 14 Life below Water is critically underfunded. And there were 341 commitments worth very close to $20 billion.”
Crockett said he also felt encouraged to see countries working collaboratively to create marine protected areas across political boundaries, such as the development of CMAR, which can help protect migratory species that “do not know about or respect” country boundaries.
“That really was and continues to be incredibly inspiring and encouraging,” Crockett said. “If environment ministers can set down their differences and come together around ambitious ocean conservation, it provides a lot of hope for the potential for 30 by 30.”
Tony Long, chief executive officer of the platform Global Fishing Watch, who also attended Our Ocean, told Mongabay in a voice message that conference attendees showed a “clear commitment to providing ocean sustainability” and motivation to enact those changes.
He added that pushing these commitments into action would be the crucial next step.
“There have been some fantastic commitments here, but we still need those actions to take place,” Long said. “The more we see the community come together to drive those actions forward, the quicker the health of our ocean will be maintained.”
Banner image caption: Sea lion with a starfish, La Paz. Image byHannes Klostermann / Ocean Image Bank.
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.
